City Life Starter

Written by Efe Abbe

The Word

The Cost of Following Jesus

⁵⁷ As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” ⁵⁸ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” ⁵⁹ To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” ⁶⁰ And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” ⁶¹ Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” ⁶² Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:57-62 ESV

³² Remember Lot’s wife. ³³ Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

Luke 17:32-33 ESV

Reflection

We need to hold two things in view: first, Jesus addressed the specific motives of specific individuals, in a specific time and place in history; and second, Luke, the author, addressing his audience.

Specific people; specific motives. Matthew records that the man who approached Jesus to be a disciple was a scribe (Matthew 8:19). In Jesus’ day being a scribe or a rabbi meant you had high social standing and rabbi’s disciples aspired to become rabbis themselves as a way of climbing the social ladder. Jesus gave this scribe a reality check that following Him would not be the traditionally expected path to comfort.

In the same way, Jesus addressed two others to prioritize their familial obligations behind following Him with words that might seem harsh to us. Jesus will always lovingly confront the things that keep us from entering the Kingdom; in this light, His words come across as merciful. Jesus saw right through to their motives and spoke in a way to wake them up to the reality of what it meant to be His disciple.

Application: Luke’s Audience

For Luke’s audience, these stories are intended to make anyone deciding to follow Jesus to keep an accurate accounting of what it means to be His disciple.

I use the term accounting because the choice to follow or not follow Jesus involves the loss and gain of things that are diametrically opposed. Jesus invites people to make this accounting in view of eternal reality.

To follow Jesus, we are called to die to our flesh, to sin, and to the world — this is what we must lose; and by the mercy of God, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus, we gain God! This is why Jesus said “[n]o one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

If God, in Jesus, gave up everything on the cross, so that we who deserve His wrath could gain Christ, nothing we lose in this life compares to the treasure we gain.

Prayer

All to be like You
Give all I have just to know You
Jesus, there’s no one beside You
Forever the hope in my heart

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And it’s all because of You, Jesus
It’s all because of You, Jesus
It’s all because of Your love that my soul will live

Scandal of Grace